kelsey swintek

Pittsburgh: A Love Letter

The parking lot is holy ground. Cracks snake sinuously, the blacktop weathered and gravelly. Painted white lines every nine feet. Luke Bryant plays from tinny truck radios. Concrete overpasses cut across the blue sky and their shadows offer the only forgiveness from September heat. Ahead of me, a row of portable toilets. There is no line but, instead, a crowd with a dubious ranking system. I wait until I gingerly pry open the plastic door with one finger, take a breath and pee as fast as I possibly can.

A woman in a Juju jersey is already in front of me as I step outside. I smile as she slips past me and turns the lock to read OCCUPIED in red block letters. A drum line attracts an audience and the vibrations reverberate between parked SUVs. Men in cargo shorts and plastic sunglasses rap on yellow snare drums. They chant, we clap. I laugh, squinting into the sun. The hype is contagious and spreads through our mass of black and yellow; stomping feet crush empty cans of IC Light.

The performance breaks and I weave back through the drum crowd, through the bathroom crowd, and return to our group. We’re here with Jon. Everyone is here with Jon. I meet a woman holding a margarita, who tells me she met Jon yesterday and he told her to come down. She has nails like talons and eyelashes that reach into the space between us. Jon is a Steelers fan. Jon could be forty-five years old or seventy-five years old. His hair is spiked and sprayed gold. His left cheek painted black, his right cheek yellow. I can’t imagine what he looks like otherwise.

His tailgate is executed with the precision of a military operation. Folding tables erect and plastic yellow tablecloths roll across the surface. Captain Morgan. Tito’s. Bloody Mary Mix. Margarita Mix. Cheese and crackers. Sandwich platters. Someone’s famous something dip. More cars pull up alongside us and more plates pile onto the table. Superstitions are shared as Jon powers up his motorized blender and distributes frozen concoctions. It’s the home opener at Heinz field. Sixty thousand people are electrified with the optimism and possibility of a great season, undefeated, a run at another Superbowl.

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We live on the top floor of a big house on a quiet one-way street near Walnut and Shady. Our kitchen windows face a funeral home, a painted brick mansion with two-story white columns and manicured shrubs. A small sign with curly typeface reads: Florist No Parking in Driveway. Men in suits and women in black pumps detour from their cars and approach me in our small muddy lawn. They look to me, wordlessly seeking permission to say hello to my puppy, already perched on her two legs, fighting the restraint of her leash. As they coo in puppy voices, I wonder who they come to mourn; an acquaintance, a cousin, a colleague, a mother.

A mature maple flaunts its canopy over a skylight in our kitchen. In autumn, brown and red and yellow leaves form a mosaic over the glass and daylight filters into our kitchen like a kaleidoscope. In winter, frost freckles the window pane and intersecting leafless branches stencil a paint by numbers outline.

My partner and I each have our own bedroom, though I don’t remember why this felt important when we moved in. We sleep in an enormous mahogany bed frame passed down by his cousin. When I wake up, I feel small.

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We sit cross-legged on the boards of the back deck. The leaves are changing, but we bask in summer’s reluctant grip. Tank tops, shorts, condensation cascading down green cans of beer. A sixteen quart bag of Miracle-Gro potting mix torn open between us. Andrew pairs his phone to our orb-like speaker named WONDERBOOM and plays his curated Back Deck Playlist. Our limp houseplants pose between us, eager for overdue TLC. The dirt feels cold and grainy in my naked fist as I maneuver to deposit it into rust colored pots. Repeat. We shake the roots free from clumped soil. We act with no authority, gentle and hesitant. We pat the dirt around the root (or is it the stem?) and shower it with tap water. We know nothing of how to care for the plants we purchased. We are delusional with hope, the prospect of a life together.

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What brings you to Pittsburgh? This is the first question anyone will ask me. I always reply, “Andrew.” What I mean by that:

- fear of losing him

- fear of losing myself

- fear of being lost

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We walk to Noodlehead when we don’t feel like cooking or if we want to do something special. The restaurant is warm, and feels warmer underneath the orange glow of Edison bulbs. Everyone raves about the food, they say it’s The Best. We think the food is okay. We love that we can bring our own cans of Rolling Rock and eat a full meal for less than $20. This is novel to us self-identified New Yorkers and feels like an inside joke every time the bill is placed between us. It’s like dinner is free.

Paul lives downstairs with his boxer-beagle mix, Charlie. He calls his ex-wife his Best Friend. He calls his two grown sons his Boys. He calls us Kiddos and calls himself an Old Man. Sometimes we go downstairs and watch football with Paul. The game will be on TV but we just sit and drink and talk about our relationships and fears and futures. Paul hands Andrew a stemless wine glass filled with Knob Creek and me the same glass humorously full of leftover Malbec from his Boy’s wedding last summer.

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We walk to Mario’s on Walnut when we’ve had a couple drinks or if we want to pretend we are still in college. My best friend visits and we wear matching denim jackets from Old Navy, glittery eyeliner and silver earrings we call Jersey Girl Hoops. Rihanna plays and we shriek and swivel our hips. Someone told me that you can smoke cigarettes inside here and I thought it was disgusting, but now I’m here and I really want one. We wait to use the bathroom because only one toilet works. An abandoned tampon lies at my feet, still in its girly packaging.

We walk to Cappy’s on Wednesdays for Trivia. We sit with the same group every week, friends of a friend from a high school. We are desperate to win. I order Bud Light bottles because it reminds me of New York. Bill Peduto sits in the corner with an amber draft beer on the bar top in front of him. I recognize him because he’s always here, which makes me feel like a regular. I only recognize him with confidence because of his Santa-like facial hair. Pete repeats the question to a room of grunts and shrugs and blank stares. I pick apart my wet beer label and strain to remember the name of the man who designed Central Park. Did he have three names? The table looks up in my direction. You lived there, right?

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Caro texts me on Thursday and tells me she wants to go somewhere and drink four beers. My phone chirps as I approach Kelly’s neon halo. Standing in the red glow, I feel like a gas station hot dog or the star of an indie film. I pull my phone from my pocket. Fuck I left my straightener on. Caro’s Uber driver turns around and remarks that she reeks of tobacco, which is weird because she doesn’t smoke. I return my phone to my pocket, walk inside and grab an empty booth.

Caro is my first Pittsburgh friend. If I didn’t have her, I don’t think I’d still be here. Our beginning is a lightning strike—rare, intense, quick, accidental. We meet for breakfast at Pamelas and she speaks with a rapidity that reminds me of home. I drink three coffees and invite her for dinner at ours soon. Years later we still have dinner and talk so fast like we’re almost out of time.

I shimmy out of my heavy coat and shove it across the torn upholstered seat. Too late I realize that my oversize scarf had invaded the occupied booth behind me. I reel it back and pretend not to notice. Kelly’s is the place you always see someone you know, or at least that’s what it seems like, if you know enough people here.

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Our back deck defrosts. A graveyard of houseplants. Skeletons in a variety of clay pots. Plastic coolers emerge from piles of now-melted snow, a treasure chest still packed solid with cans of Rolling Rock and IC Light.

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The truth: when I moved to Pittsburgh, I never once thought I’d stay. People move all the time. My entire life could fit in the back of a car. Maybe soon I’ll feel a deeper sense of belonging, or remember the names and spellings of the three rivers that rush underneath hundreds of bridges that outline our landscape.

The tension: I don’t think I’ll ever leave Pittsburgh, and the days I spend here add up to an inevitable ending I can’t stomach. I love Pittsburgh because I am not Pittsburgh. I love feeling like an other, a person with a story filled with places that have nothing to do with this storied gray almost-midwestern city.

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In baseball, home is both where you start and where you end. Like a boomerang, or a round trip. My favorite place to sit at a Pirates game is in section 313. It’s like you’re on top of the world. The team is bad. The crowd is jaded but deep down, hopeful. I’m indifferent, and my lack of interest in the actual playing of sport guarantees a good time regardless of the final score. The clouds beyond the Jumbotron are swollen and pink. The lights of downtown twinkle after the seventh inning. Pierogis race as I eat my hotdog. Fireworks shoot up above the river with each home run and chants of Let’s Go Bucs fill the stadium. I look around and nod toward the man scaling the steps and selling iconic yellow tall boys of IC. On the field below, a Pirate slides home, and I spring out of my seat, squealing.